I Know What
by shelter
Summary: They'll be spending the rest of their lives in exile. But it seems only Yoruichi knows really what they want. Yoruichi/ Urahara


**I KNOW WHAT**

**DISCLAIMER:** Bleach belongs rightfully to Kubo Tite.

**RATING: **T (with some suggestive scenes) - Yoruichi/ Urahara

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**1.**

"You have no idea what you're doing, do you?"

Only Tessai stops to stare at her. None of the others are moving: Yoruichi wonders, even, if their faces have the ability of response. But Kisuke ignores the comment. He assembles Hirako Shinji in sitting position and looks at the hollow mask cocooned over his face like a doctor would examine a fatal wound.

She moves instead, to stem the bar of light fixed across the room. She stands, a black cloak over whatever light remaining, arms at ease, one leg angled to the ground. She waits till Kisuke moves all the twelve bodies to the wall before she asks, one more time:

"Do you?"

"Yoruichi-san, maybe it's best we left Urahara-san to his –"

"I wasn't talking to you, Tessai."

She steps towards him, and the light knifes its sharp glare into Kisuke's back. She stops just short of a kick's length from the man she's betted, bargained, maybe wasted her life for. And as she waits for an answer, he continues massaging his victims' wrists.

"What an unpleasant question to ask," he says, not even to her face.

Her hands solidify into fists. She wants to punch him. But the stone-strapped faces of the other victims continue to stare her down, adding to Tessai's behind.

She can't touch this man. He is, after all, Urahara Kisuke.

"I didn't leave Soul Society for a false hope."

She thinks it sounds more like a plea, less like an accusation. One that Kisuke responds to with his face, already stretched by the light into a web of shadow. He does not look at her in the eye.

"I didn't ask you to leave."

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**2.**

Outside, she walks in a huge loop around where Tessai has made the barrier. The barrier is strong: even with all her abilities to track hollow over distances, she cannot sense anything behind the transparent boundary. It runs parallel to a factory's perimeter fence. She follows it. Above, the inverted bowl of the sky is crowded with grey-haired clouds. Stray cats' eyes brighten the other side of the fence, like globes of washed light.

At one point, there is a split in the fence. She climbs through the thief-shaped hole, through the pressing arms of weedy trees and to, finally, some traffic. Counting the steady rhythm of flowing cars, she heads in the direction of their fading tail-lights.

She does not know how long she has been walking, but she passes a sign that reads NO LEFT TURN ON RED, and Yoruichi switches her pace, slowly starts back.

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**3.**

She runs into a group of _Shinigami_. They are stationed all around the barrier, unable to see or feel within it, too curious. Her appearance throws them into disarray. She watches them shout warnings to her. But when one begins to run off, she needs to make sure there are no witnesses.

When she's finished, a dusty mist of spirit particles recedes into the night. Yoruichi gathers the clipped swords and torn robes, and dumps them into arrayed pattern which makes the scene look like a hollow attack gone wrong. Still, she has left one of the novice _Shinigami_ alive – to convince herself she is, unlike those behind the barrier, still human – perhaps –

She drags the last survivor by her hair and leaves her by the side of the road, where the lights of the traffic will most certainly beat down on her. She worries about hollows. But she knows she, herself, has too much more to worry about.

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**4.**

A barrier within a barrier within a barrier. And within the innermost square, Kisuke fights Hirako Shinji and his monster face. Yoruichi watches as Kisuke loses, recovers and loses again. Detached from everything, Tessai maintains the strength of the invisible wall. It is so strong that when Kisuke gets thrown against it, Yoruichi sees his entire shoulder shift diagonally to the rest of his body.

"Does he know what he's doing?" Yoruichi demands.

Tessai refuses to release his concentration to answer. Inside the Shinji-turned-Hollow has drawn a blade from thin air, and Kisuke has to crawl away to avoid being impaled. He dances around the monster like an old man on a cane, awkward and off balance. When the monster's stab again narrowly leaps away from his face, Yoruichi almost yells out a warning.

Finally, Kisuke draws his own sword, and for a whole minute he fights on equal footing. Then the monster's roar intensifies: following through its mindless rampage, it flings a bolt of pure white light against its aggressor.

"Tessai! Enough of this! Let him out –"

"Urahara-san instructed me to keep the barrier –"

Kisuke stands, but the monster headbutts him once, twice, three times. At that moment, Kisuke spears the hollow mask with _Benihime_. And the effect is instantaneous. Yoruichi shields her eyes as the monster evaporates, leaving Shinji in its place, his eyes stuck to the ceiling of his head.

But it is Kisuke who collapses first.

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**5.**

Outside, Tessai watches as Shinji self-duels himself in round two, his form even more gruesome than before, raging within triple-layered barriers. Yoruichi can hear the monster's wailing – wailing to be released from its torment.

"Kisuke you Bastard."

She has never been good at healing, but she tries. Her hands, poised over the flowery bruise on his neck, goad her towards a stranglehold.

"You don't know anything, do you?"

"Do you always ask me rhetorical questions, Yoruichi? I thought we were through that phase."

Kisuke tries to sit up, the seat of his robes thick with bleeding from somewhere within his body. From beyond the monster slams into Tessai's barrier, throwing an echo of friction between two equally hard surfaces. Kisuke, still, smiles – the corners of his mouth slipping upward, his bloodied face lifted by his cheekbones.

"I don't know to do with you –" And she decides to add, for effect: "Idiot."

"I do." He latches to her shoulder, to steady himself. "I've always known what you want."

The predictable thrashing of the monster within the barrier continues. A rising crescendo of screams follows, and a sharp burst of energy. But Yoruichi can feel his hands burrowing into her robe.

"You know, you're such a lousy –"

"At least I know it."

She hoists him against her. The force of the movement makes him flinch, his face turning with pain. She sighs, then shoves his hands down her waist.

"Then at least do it properly, before Tessai comes in."

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_Written for Bleach Contest Prompt #72 (Accident) on LJ._


End file.
